Das Müllprojekt

Daniel Kötter & Allyn Gaestel with Jochen Becker

»Chinafrika. sample«
photo installation
Juni 18th 3pm — presentation and talk with Daniel Kötter and Jochen Becker

China and Africa constitute the two driving forces shaping globalisation’s economic, political, and cultural future. Following raw materials extraction in the Central African Copperbelt and production in the factories of China’s Pearl River Delta, a multitude of electronics find their way to Lagos’s Alaba market – the largest distributor of Chinese electronics in all of West Africa – in the suitcases, boxes, and containers of Nigerian merchants. Once used, most products are discarded in African e-waste dumps, sorted for salvageable materials, and shipped back to China. Yet what role does Europe, the continent that has long seen itself as the centre of the world, play in this process?

Daniel Kötter mit Allyn Gaestel und Jochen Becker — Berlin / Lagos / Berlin

Filmmaker and director Daniel Kötter has researched the cultural effects of the economic and political ties between China and the African continent together with curator and urbanist Jochen Becker since 2013. Their exhibition, Chinafrika. under construction, will be featured in Leipzig’s Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst from June to September 2017. The performance Chinafrika. mobile was created especially for the Kunstfest Weimar. Allyn Gaestel lives and works as a journalist in Lagos, Nigeria, contributing to the Chinafrika project as a member of the Lagos Working Group. Together with Daniel Kötter, she conducts research on the lifecycle of mobile phones in China, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This research continues to produces texts, images, and films, which are regularly exhibited in ever-changing constellations.